A Sleep Expert's Day: How Diet Shapes Nighttime Slumber
Columbia sleep-nutrition researcher Marie-Pierre St-Onge explains that a Mediterranean-style, fiber-rich diet consumed across the day—favoring fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, lean proteins, and minimizing refined sugars—supports better sleep by providing sleep-regulating nutrients, stabilizing blood sugar, and boosting melatonin. Large studies link this eating pattern to less insomnia and longer, more efficient sleep. In her own routine, she emphasizes three-hour-gap between dinner and sleep, a breakfast of high-fiber cereal with banana, lunch featuring sourdough bread with yogurt and fruit, and dinners with fish, legumes, and vegetables, plus dim lighting before bed to cue melatonin and a consistent sleep schedule.
